The pulse of the customer: Richard Cooper

There are a host of programs to encourage loyalty. But are they effective in the long-run? Customer satisfaction will always be a fundamental part of running any successful business, but satisfaction is not the end goal. The end goal should be to develop a customer base that’s not just satisfied, […]

Dealers need to embrace customers who don’t want to connect in traditional ways In the “old days” (around 2002 or so), I was conducting some focus groups for an OEM client on the subject of service. The clients (from dealerships and from the factory) were sitting behind the one-way glass […]

What customers feel may be more important than what they think — are dealers asking the right questions to engage them? A recent article in the Report on Business caught my attention. It was an interview with Joe Natale, the new Rogers Telecommunications CEO who recently left rival Telus to join […]

For customer information to positively impact your business, it must be “intelligent” Our major banks have been in the news recently for doing something with very negative connotations that we in the auto industry do all the time: “upselling”. Upselling is often cited by car dealer customers as one of […]

You can’t open any automotive blog, trade journal or website without reading something about we need to change the way we buy and sell cars. I think it’s time to stop dancing around at the edges of the status quo and start to think about some fundamental changes. There are […]

New research yields some interesting findings about buying habits. Dealers would be wise to take heed. There is a lot of hype in the media these days about emerging automotive technology. The subject that seems to be getting most attention is autonomous or self-driving cars and there are very different […]

How to have conversations with customers about fuel efficiency This statement from The Telegraph, a major U.K. newspaper, caught my attention recently: “Is there a car buyer left in the country who believes the official fuel economy numbers?” It’s a question that could apply to any developed automotive market. For […]

We’ve been hearing a lot over the past few years about how important digital communication is in the car buying process and how critical it is for dealerships to invest in and develop digital communication, sales and marketing strategies.